Oakland is the 3rd highest crime City in the US, according to new ranking

The rankings are based on the incidence of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and vehicle theft in all US cities with more than 75,000 residents. Out of 393 cities considered, Oakland clocked in as the 3rd most crime ridden, topped only by Camden, NJ and St. Louis, MO. Other cities joining Oakland in the top 10 include Detroit, MI, Flint, MI, New Orleans, LA, Birmingham, AL, Cleveland, OH, Jackson, MS and Memphis, TN.

The past few years have seen Oakland playing musical chairs with St. Louis, Camden, and Detroit at the top of the list, ranking 4th in 2007 and 5th in 2008. Oakland’s defenders are generally quick to dismiss the list, either questioning its methodology or claiming the City is just doomed to sky-high violent crime because of its demographics.

In their rush to repudiate the rankings, they tend to forget that Oakland’s place at the top of the list is actually a relatively new phenomenon. Between 1998 and 2004, Oakland never even made it into the top 20 highest crime cities.

Former Oakland Police Chief Wayne Tucker had, to my mind, the most disturbing response to the rankings, when he called Oakland’s 4th-place finish in 2007 “deceptive,” because crime is concentrated in “two reasonably small areas.” Now-defunct Oakland blog Dogtown Commons shot back:

First, Tucker is dangerously close to implying that the high-crime neighborhoods aren’t worth worrying about, and second, the “two reasonably small areas” are in fact most of Oakland. It would be just as accurate, if not more so, to say that “two reasonably small areas” (everything East of highway 13 and the neighborhoods Northeast of Lake Merritt) have relatively low concentrations of crime.

All I would add is that even if you accept Tucker’s characterization that Oakland has a wider range of high-crime and low-crime areas than other cities, that means that Oakland’s high-crime areas are even more violent and crime-plagued than the ranking shows, since the ranking represents city-wide statistics that average out low-crime and high-crime areas. So by arguing that some parts of Oakland are actually quite safe, Tucker is also admitting that the unsafe parts are even less safe than the ranking reflects. That may well be true, but is it really something a Police Chief wants to brag about?

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I can understand the frustration of city officials who are suddenly barraged with questions about a list that doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know, but instead of bragging that Oakland is actually pretty safe if you’re rich, and quibbling about whether the statistics are perfectly calibrated, wouldn’t a more appropriate response be to acknowledge that Oakland’s crime is too high, and explain their plans to reduce it?

Thankfully, Oakland finally seems to have landed itself an official who is appropriately outraged by the City’s violent crime problem in new Police Chief Anthony Batts. Will the official response this year be any better? And more important, will we get out of the top five next year?